We already have an almost-perfect medium for that, FireWire. It allows control, audio, and video to be passed around, with pre-allocated bandwidth and everything.
Somebody needs to set up a scheme for everything to interconnect by it, and we could have a *great* system with one type of cable, and one cable per device.
1) Wrong, the iPod uses Lithium Polymer, that's how they fit the friekin' battery in such a small package. Use Google to find some references.
2) LI-Poly isn't necessarily higher capacity, but it's not constrained to a certain shape. Normal Li-Ion batteries come as packs of pre-made cells, wasting a significant amount of space to their cylindric al size. Li-Poly batteries can be made in a much wider range of shapes, and so allow the manufacturer to fit more actual battery in a given space.
Now that quartz technology is available (and quiet, efficient, and extremely cheap) most modern clocks have no reliance on the frequency of incoming power. I've seen a few clocks that did depend on incoming power, but they were noisy little things...a constant 60Hz sound came from them.
Do you even know what you're talking about? RF = Radio Frequency. It's the onyl game in town for "wireless" connections save IR (InfraRed) connections. Since IR relies on line-of-sight between transcievers, you can bet it'll be RF of some sort.
Maybe when your body is used to it, but believe me...it's hard to walk for a few minutes after inhaling a milligram or so of nicotine if you are not accustomed to the effects.
...because you were thinking like a UNIX user, instead of going with what makes basic sense. Apple presented the OS as an easy-to-use, powerful system with UNIX underneath it all. You chose to view it as a UNIX system with a candy coating, and all the rough edges that most other environments had.
Now, I'm not going to say that a specific method should be "intuitive" to you, but I will say that an item like the Terminal belongs where they put it in the UI, because that's where your average unindoctrinated user could logically reason it to be.
Interestingly enough, I remember quite well an Apple monitor (about a 19" or so made in the mid-90s) with the power switch placed in the back. Near the middle of the back, to be precise.
My, how technology has advanced in the area of human interaction...
I think the parent realized that, but was trying to point out that the $100 price drop was acheived not by obtaining cheaper components, but by leaving 'optional' components out of the deal. It's not so much of a price drop once you re-add the dock, which most people (I think) would want.
The iMac moved things forward in part by turning its back on a lot of legacy stuff.... Now that Dell has embraced the idea of computers without floppy drives, I guess the iMac's work here is done.
And it only took them five years! Have we forgotten that the iMac has been out since summer 1998, making the end of legacy ports on Macs a six-year-old event? (I know the Blue & White G3s had ADB for a while later, but that was the only legacy port kept at all, IIRC. And it was only on the high-end machines)
Are there still serial and parallel ports? What about PS/2? At least ISA's been pretty well gone for a couple of years now.
The "PC 2001" spec called for the removal of all legacy devices, and most of them are still around. Then again, in our capitalist society I can see why. It's dirt cheap to keep those ports around, and everybody has devices to use them. Nobody wants to be the first company to say "screw you and your legacy hardware." They're all afraid of the potential loss of business.
Which goes to show one advantage Apple has: since they control 100% of the Mac market, they can dictate to that market much more forcefully than Intel, Microsoft, or Dell could on their own.
We were a web hosting operation (amongst other things) but the convenience of using CG for little internal sites was nice, and it allowed us to keep "personal" sites completely away from our production web servers. Of course, it kept them right on top of our e-mail servers, so...
CommuniGate is cool, but I'm not sure it's good enough for use outside workgroups and relatively small businesses.
Anecdote follows: We had it set up to auth against LDAP for all users, but (IIRC) the admin password was defined within the app. For some reason, this caused the whole program to crash when presented with an invalid admin password. Didn't get the admin password correct on the first try? Well, your mail's down. (Now *that*'s security!) Since it's really a monolithic app, that means ingoing mail, outgoing mail, and hosted web sites are all broken until you get the server restarted. This looks like a job for...The Watchdog Process!
Pardon, but I'm really having a hard time thinking that every implementor of native OGL interfaces is that inept at optimization, unless your "application space" happens to be Fully-3D-Apple-II games or something similar.
I don't quite understand why you think that the config files in Linux are unstructured. They are of the form key = value, and every line that starts with # is a comment. Simple and usable.
But they aren't. A dozen different programs will give you a half-dozen config file formats. You have XML files, you have key-value pairs, you have other forms of tagged text. The rules for different config files are almost as disparate as the programs themselves.
If it's such a simple matter of programming, then why hasn't it been done? I'll readily admit that I am not a competent C programmer, so I'm not equipped to do it myself.
I think, at the very least, this is an example of OSS developers being somewhat out-of-touch with the functionality that the average person wants. Which is, I suppose, fine. I'm not going to tell someone that they have to write software for me; I don't get that priviledge until I start paying for it. Still, don't blame people like me for using something other than Linux as their OS of choice. It fits needs, and may be more capable in some regards, but it's still the wrong tool for the job sometimes. It's like me wanting a 1000 CC motorcycle, and having someone go on about "why would you want that, when you can get a car with three times the displacement and much more power? The car will even carry three more people comfortably!"
But I digress. =P
Forcing you to only use it in that mode is simply annoying.
Fine, don't force anyone else. But let me and we'll talk.
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Hey, I like Overly Critical Guy!
It's kind of a pain, but I'm fairly sure this can be accomplished with BitPIM and the LG LX-5550, and probably other phones as well.
We already have an almost-perfect medium for that, FireWire. It allows control, audio, and video to be passed around, with pre-allocated bandwidth and everything.
Somebody needs to set up a scheme for everything to interconnect by it, and we could have a *great* system with one type of cable, and one cable per device.
It could be great, I tells ya - GREAT!
You kiddin'? Female testes love the warmth. Why do you think they're tucked so far up inside?
=P
Insightful? Please.
There's nothing legitimate or commendable about being a bigot.
1) Wrong, the iPod uses Lithium Polymer, that's how they fit the friekin' battery in such a small package. Use Google to find some references.
2) LI-Poly isn't necessarily higher capacity, but it's not constrained to a certain shape. Normal Li-Ion batteries come as packs of pre-made cells, wasting a significant amount of space to their cylindric al size. Li-Poly batteries can be made in a much wider range of shapes, and so allow the manufacturer to fit more actual battery in a given space.
...and even if it does, there's a high chance it will survive anyhow. The discs are significantly more durable than CDs, that's for sure.
Now that quartz technology is available (and quiet, efficient, and extremely cheap) most modern clocks have no reliance on the frequency of incoming power. I've seen a few clocks that did depend on incoming power, but they were noisy little things...a constant 60Hz sound came from them.
What about people like me, who get their bionic heart from a black-market street-corner surgeon?
Do you even know what you're talking about? RF = Radio Frequency. It's the onyl game in town for "wireless" connections save IR (InfraRed) connections. Since IR relies on line-of-sight between transcievers, you can bet it'll be RF of some sort.
I loved the PowerMac 6100-style case, where the power button was placed right near the floppy drive on the front of the case.
Occasionally, a person familiar with Windows would look to eject the disk and...
nicotine...does not cause intoxication
Maybe when your body is used to it, but believe me...it's hard to walk for a few minutes after inhaling a milligram or so of nicotine if you are not accustomed to the effects.
...because you were thinking like a UNIX user, instead of going with what makes basic sense. Apple presented the OS as an easy-to-use, powerful system with UNIX underneath it all. You chose to view it as a UNIX system with a candy coating, and all the rough edges that most other environments had.
Now, I'm not going to say that a specific method should be "intuitive" to you, but I will say that an item like the Terminal belongs where they put it in the UI, because that's where your average unindoctrinated user could logically reason it to be.
Interestingly enough, I remember quite well an Apple monitor (about a 19" or so made in the mid-90s) with the power switch placed in the back. Near the middle of the back, to be precise.
My, how technology has advanced in the area of human interaction...
Console versions of FPS are barely shadows of the real thing.
EXCEPT this console version will have a co-op play mode, which I very much look forward to.
I think the parent realized that, but was trying to point out that the $100 price drop was acheived not by obtaining cheaper components, but by leaving 'optional' components out of the deal. It's not so much of a price drop once you re-add the dock, which most people (I think) would want.
Probably not a Hollywood product, think home movies from DVCam or MiniDV.
The iMac moved things forward in part by turning its back on a lot of legacy stuff. ...
Now that Dell has embraced the idea of computers without floppy drives, I guess the iMac's work here is done.
And it only took them five years! Have we forgotten that the iMac has been out since summer 1998, making the end of legacy ports on Macs a six-year-old event? (I know the Blue & White G3s had ADB for a while later, but that was the only legacy port kept at all, IIRC. And it was only on the high-end machines)
Are there still serial and parallel ports? What about PS/2? At least ISA's been pretty well gone for a couple of years now.
The "PC 2001" spec called for the removal of all legacy devices, and most of them are still around. Then again, in our capitalist society I can see why. It's dirt cheap to keep those ports around, and everybody has devices to use them. Nobody wants to be the first company to say "screw you and your legacy hardware." They're all afraid of the potential loss of business.
Which goes to show one advantage Apple has: since they control 100% of the Mac market, they can dictate to that market much more forcefully than Intel, Microsoft, or Dell could on their own.
But, did you try it? It's a very specific path to destruction, that bug.
That's what we were using it for.
We were a web hosting operation (amongst other things) but the convenience of using CG for little internal sites was nice, and it allowed us to keep "personal" sites completely away from our production web servers. Of course, it kept them right on top of our e-mail servers, so...
I've been rather happy about the haxie.
I don't even own a Mac, and I bought it! =P
('tis quite sad, I worked on a Mac back in the day, but no longer do...)
CommuniGate is cool, but I'm not sure it's good enough for use outside workgroups and relatively small businesses.
Anecdote follows:
We had it set up to auth against LDAP for all users, but (IIRC) the admin password was defined within the app. For some reason, this caused the whole program to crash when presented with an invalid admin password. Didn't get the admin password correct on the first try? Well, your mail's down. (Now *that*'s security!) Since it's really a monolithic app, that means ingoing mail, outgoing mail, and hosted web sites are all broken until you get the server restarted. This looks like a job for...The Watchdog Process!
Pardon, but I'm really having a hard time thinking that every implementor of native OGL interfaces is that inept at optimization, unless your "application space" happens to be Fully-3D-Apple-II games or something similar.
I don't quite understand why you think that the config files in Linux are unstructured. They are of the form key = value, and every line that starts with # is a comment. Simple and usable.
But they aren't. A dozen different programs will give you a half-dozen config file formats. You have XML files, you have key-value pairs, you have other forms of tagged text. The rules for different config files are almost as disparate as the programs themselves.
If it's such a simple matter of programming, then why hasn't it been done? I'll readily admit that I am not a competent C programmer, so I'm not equipped to do it myself.
I think, at the very least, this is an example of OSS developers being somewhat out-of-touch with the functionality that the average person wants. Which is, I suppose, fine. I'm not going to tell someone that they have to write software for me; I don't get that priviledge until I start paying for it. Still, don't blame people like me for using something other than Linux as their OS of choice. It fits needs, and may be more capable in some regards, but it's still the wrong tool for the job sometimes. It's like me wanting a 1000 CC motorcycle, and having someone go on about "why would you want that, when you can get a car with three times the displacement and much more power? The car will even carry three more people comfortably!"
But I digress. =P
Forcing you to only use it in that mode is simply annoying.
Fine, don't force anyone else. But let me and we'll talk.